Three lectures that grounded the soul, the heart and the body (3)

A very unique presentation
by Geshe Michael Roach

Lecture 3: Buddhist teachings that ground my heart for a successful career

Like many people, I am also a person who from time to time
worry about stability of career.

Just a few days after Dr Lai's talk,
I went for a 2-night career talk
organised by The Diamond Cutter Institute,
meeting a person I admire for a long time but
never thought I would be able to meet in person
-- Geshe Michael Roach.

I first learnt about the existence of Geshe Michael Roach
through recommendation by some buddhist friends,
multiple years back, about this book called
"The Diamond Cutter".

In the book, the author i.e. Geshe Michael Roach
narrated how he set up a successful diamond company
in New York within 1 year, using Buddhist teachings
he learnt in a Tibetan Monastry for 25 years.

At Geshe Michael's talk over two evenings,
Geshe Michael wanted to specifically answer
most people's desperate wish for a successful career.

He compassionately pointed out that
the only guaranteed way towards a successful career is to
plant the seeds for a successful career.
That is to help other people succeed in their careers
and to solve other people's problems in their careers.

Strange as it sounded, but that was a proven path
as per Geshe Michael's testimonial
and Buddhist texts (The Diamond Sutra).

Geshe also taught us 4 specific steps to ensure that
we will succeed in our career faster:

(I) plant the seeds in the right place
   i.e to help people who helped us a lot before (e.g. parents),
         people who helps a lot more people
         or people who are in emergencies -- without hesitation

(II) meditate and plan how
      to help resolve target's sufferings/difficulties

(III) take action

(IV) recollect every evening on
      own's kind deeds during the day
      to help resolve target's difficulties

Also according to Geshe Michael,
our success in career is easily erased by jealousy.
To insure the success of our career from being demolished by jealousy,
he reminded us 4 important concepts to help dissolve it:

(A) Jealousy is a perspective that come from ourselves,
      hence it can be eliminated

(B) Any intention/seed will eventually amplify,
      hence the damaging results of jealousy 
      is scalable in long term

(C) Commit to ourselves that
      we will not be jealous over defined period of time
      as an initial practice

(D) Do something to conteract jealousy,
      e.g. learn to praise a person.

I almost wanted to give Geshe a standing oviation
for all those precious teachings.

He was simply brilliant
putting buddhism into lay man terms and
making it so relevant to our modern lives
-- especially when it grounded my unsettled heart
in my career switch recently!


Gratefully,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com



{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}

Three lectures that grounded the soul, the heart and the body (2)

Lapis Lazuli Light's motto

Lecture 2: An alternative healing technique that grounds the body

A month later after attending Prof Huo's enlightening lecture,
came another great teacher,
Dr Lai Chiu-nan (founder of Lapis Lazuli Light)
who has been advocating natural healing alternative for decades.

That evening with Dr Lai at Kreta Ayer People's Theatre,
further opened up my eyes and my mind towards
the broad possibilities to heal without medication.

Among a handful of non-intrusive healing techniques that Dr Lai introduced,
including healing with sound/music, colour illumination,
eye-ball rolling and specific vocal exercises,
it was the Earthing technique that was most impressive,
according to some amazing testimonials she quoted.

Earthing is a simple technique whereby we simply get ourselves
in contact directly with the Earth,
to balance up our bodily energy field for wellness benefits.
E.g walking bare foot on a green pasture, lying down on the beach.

This wasn't the first time that I've heard of Earthing.
All the while I thought it is just good for minor wellness improvement.
But that evening, Dr Lai elaborated quite deeply
on how it could be deviced skillfully and creatively to heal critical illnesses.

In an example, Dr Lai mentioned how a sick old man being bed-ridden for years
managed to get out his bed just a few days after getting himself Earth-ed or Ground-ed.
As the old man was not at all possible to get out his bed to begin with,
somebody creatively got this old man to sleep on a bed linen
which is electro-conductive and connected to the ground,
like how all electrical appliances is grounded at the socket in case of leakage of electricity..

With that very dramatic healing success story,
I began to feel it's necessary to pay more attention getting grounded
to mother Earth more frequently.

As many of us who live in the city have little chance of getting connected with the Earth,
Dr Lai suggested wearing shoes which soles are made of cotton or hay
to aid Earthing process "on the go" in oppose to rubber soled shoes
that are electrical insulator.

Very grateful to Dr Lai's for pointing out how to
heal and ground our body the natural way :)

With metta,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com

{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}

Three lectures that grounded the soul, the heart and the body (1)

XinHai Revolution Lecture @ Xi Yao

The past two months had been eventful,
in term of my personal improvement journey.
I feel very blessed to be able to receive guidance and education from 3 prominent gurus,
and had my soul, my heart and my body grounded at 3 different occasions.

Here I would like to share my learning journey and
some important pointers I got from the gurus.

Lecture 1: The Revolution that grounded my soul

Early Sep, I was recommended by my friend Peck Yin
to attend an interesting lecture by a modern philosopher/educator,
Prof Huo Tao Hui (霍韜晦) from Hong Kong.

It's an event co-organised by Xi Yao Culture Association
and other Chinese culture academic institutions,
to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of XinHai Revolution.

Prof Huo delivered a solid 3 hours historic lecture in a very lively manner
and I listened enthusiastically to the modern history of China
with mixed sentiments towards the difficulties and sufferings my ancestors went through.

The lecturer was a very good "supplement" to what I missed out in high school
as it was exactly the post 1911 Chinese history that I missed out,
as I skipped my final year of high school (for good reasons).

All these years, (I know somehow weird) I felt "disconnected from my origin"
due to under-information of modern history of China,
until I got the last chapter of Chinese history "re-instated" at Prof Huo's lecture.
It was emotionally and intellectually critical to me.

It was a sad story to listen to, but I felt more "grounded"(settled)
after Prof Huo's lecture.
Especially, towards the end of the lecture,
Prof Huo delivered his philosophical interpretation of
the revolution event and the impact of such a revolution
on the past 100 years of modern China.

One very impressive remark that Prof Huo made was that
XinHai Revolution tho' technically was an event
that seemed successfully overthrowing
the ~2500 years of Imperial System of China,
the Revolution from macro point of view
could be seen either a "failure" or an uncompleted revolution.

The revolution terminated the age of Imperialism
but the very same revolution also failed to create
a Republic (initially intended for and which Sun Yat-sen strived to form)
-- please note that this is a neutral academic view, hope PRC readers do not take offence
According to Prof Huo,
one of the critical factors behind the incompleteness of the revolution
or the lacking element that drag this revolution for100 years
is the need of 'Min De'(民德) -- crudely translated as the moral excellence of the general public.

Prof Huo further illustrated the need to educate public
and uphold the strong moral values,
in order for a country to advance;
quoting vivid examples of the lack of virtue
leading to a lot of past sorrowful failures in modern Chinese history.

Touching lightly on the setback of over-worshipping capitalism in modern society,
he warned that the lack of moral education in nowadays materialistic world
will easily and constantly face huge predicament (hence chaos) when changes come upon.

I was very very touched by Prof Huo's deep insight
and his inner good will to wake us up to rebuild a world with integrity 
through his skillful delivery of the 3-hour lecture.

With gratitude,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com


p/s: Xi Yao Culture Association founded Prof Huo is a platform by which he passes on his educational philosophies and intention to rebuild a moral world.
{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}